The Big Heat

Chapter 14

Bannion was on his own as he crossed City Line into Philadelphia. He slowed down to forty with the traffic and tried to keep his imagination and temper in check. They wouldn’t try anything so raw, he kept telling himself; but the knowledge of what they’d done to Lucy Carroway, to Kate, mocked this self-delusion. Why should they stop now? This was their town and they did what they liked with it, and the people in it, whether they happened to be men, women or four-year-old kids.

The traffic thickened as he neared the center of the city. Finally he was through the worst of it, across the river and onto an artery that led out to Marg’s and Al’s home. He opened up then, hammering the horn with a clenched fist, forcing the traffic to give way, slipping through changing lights inches ahead of right-angling cars.

They lived on Filmore Street, a tree-lined avenue of two-story apartment buildings. It was a dark, cloudy night; the street lamps yellow cones barely reached as far as the sidewalks.

There were no lights in the living room of their apartment, Bannion saw, as he went up the stone walk to the entrance. Maybe Al was playing possum. Maybe anything.

He entered the dark vestibule and reached out for the bell of Al’s apartment. Something hard jammed into his back, and a soft but business-like voice said, “Easy Mac! Get your arms away from your body and fast.”

Bannion obeyed slowly, cursing his own carelessness.

“Okay, upstairs,” the soft voice said. “Move nice and easy, big man.” An arm passed around Bannion, the inner door was pulled open. “Up you go.”

Bannion went up the stairs to the first landing. The door opened and Al looked out, a worried frown on his high forehead. “Damn, I’m glad to see you—”

“Shut the door!” Bannion snapped.

“Hold it, relax!”

Bannion spun sideways, slapping downward at the gun in his back. He struck the man’s wrist instead, and heard a yelp of pain. The gun struck the carpeted floor and bounced down the steps.

Al grabbed his arm. “It’s all right, Dave!” he shouted.

The man behind Bannion scuttled down the steps after his gun.

“What’s going on?” Bannion said.

The man picked up the gun and looked up at Bannion with a crestfallen smile. He was slimly built, twenty-eight or thirty, with pleasant, intelligent features. “You’re pretty fast, Mr. Bannion,” he said. “I’m sorry about jumping you, but Al said to stop everybody, and I was just following orders.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Al said. “Get back into the vestibule, Mark.”

Bannion looked from the man with the gun to Al. “What kind of a stunt is this?” he said.

“Come in, come in and I’ll tell you,” Al said.

Bannion shrugged and walked into Al’s apartment. “Well, what is it?” he said.

“He’s a friend of mine,” Al said, closing the door. “After I talked with you I got in touch with some of the guys I soldiered with in the Pacific. They’re good guys. They came on the double.”

Bannion was silent a moment. “They’re taking a chance,” he said.

“They know what they’re doing. Look, Marg’s in the bedroom with the kids. Come on in and meet the boys.”

Bannion put his hat and coat on a chair and walked quietly down the hall after Al. Three men were at the table in the dining room, their coats on the backs of the chairs. They w-ere playing cards. It looked like a mild, friendly game. There were a half dozen bottles of beer on the table.

Al introduced them with a word or two of description; Bannion shook hands with Tom Bell, a stocky towhead who ran a garage; with a red-haired lawyer named Corcoran, and with Tony Myers, an insurance man who greeted him as warmly as if he were a prospective client.

Al poured a beer for him, and Bannion sat down slowly. He felt tired and slightly confused. The beer tasted good; it cleaned the dry taste of fear from his throat. He looked at the three men and shook his head. “You’re all nuts,” he said.

“Dave got past Mark,” Al said.

They regarded him with new respect. “That boy’s slipping,” Tom Bell said. “You know, Mr. Bannion, Mark got himself a DSC on Okinawa, and out there that wasn’t a theatre ribbon. But he just can’t take this civilian life, I guess.”

Myers stood up, and said, “I’ll go down and keep him company.”

“Wait a minute,” Bannion said. “You men mean well, but I can’t let you do it. If trouble comes it will be from hoodlums who know their business, and won’t be stopped by amateurs whose hearts happen to be in the right place. It’s my job, boys.”

Bell, the towhead, looked annoyed. “They’re real tough characters, eh?” he said. “Just like you see in comic books, with guns and everything. Well, we ain’t exactly the cast from a maypole dance, Bannion.” He hitched around in his chair, and tossed his cards onto the table. “Look, I been places those creeps wouldn’t go unless they were in a fifty-ton tank. And I went in on foot with nothing in me hand but a BAR. I—”

Corcoran regarded him with a pained expression. “Tommy, if this is the story of your single-handed occupation of the Philippines, remember most of us have heard it quite a few times.”

“All right, big wit,” Bell said, irritably. “I used to think it was for the birds. But in the back of my head I knew it had to be done. Keep our homes safe, all that soap-box stuff. Now you tell me some rough characters are going to walk in and knock off a four-year-old kid, and that I’m too soft to stand up to ’em. Well, I’ll tell you something. Anybody comes in tonight with that idea is going to wind up Goddamn dead. I tell you—”

Corcoran slapped him on the shoulder. “Ah, the patriot and poet is coming out now, eh my boy?”

“Ah, shove it,” Bell said with an uncomfortable grin.

Corcoran glanced at Bannion. “Seriously, Bell is right. Unfortunately he’s a Swede and lacks our fine Celtic sense of restraint and understatement. But he’s putting it accurately, if with considerable personal glorification. Your little girl is safe. Myers and Mark are in the vestibule, and out in the back yard is a character we used to call the Chief. The Chief is an Indian, and a damned unnerving thing to meet in the dark. Inside there’s Tommy, myself, and your balding brother-in-law, who distinguished himself as the only American soldier to go AWOL in a jungle consisting solely of coconuts, spiders and Nips.” Corcoran nodded slowly, and now his face was grimly serious. “Everything will be okay, Mr. Bannion. You can count on that.”

Bannion looked around at them all, and realized with a touch of wonder that these run-of-the-mill, law-abiding citizens had something that was probably more than a match for Stone, Lagana and their hard, brutal organizations. It was the power of simple, down-to-earth goodness.

“Well, you want to sit in, Mr. Bannion?” Tom Bell said, picking up the cards.

“No, thanks. I’ve got to go back downtown.”

“Well, things here are under control. Remember that.”

Al came with Bannion to the front door. “Don’t take too many chances, Dave.”

“I’m being careful. The break is coming. Look, tell Brigid I’ll be out tomorrow. Tell her, well, tell her I’ll bring her a surprise.”

“All right, I’ll tell her, Dave.”

Bannion went quietly down to the vestibule. As he opened the door he heard Myers saying, in an insistent, crowding voice, “Now, Mark, the thing about a twenty-year endowment is this. You get—” he stopped and said, “You leave things in our hands, Mr. Bannion. We got this end taped.”

“Thanks. Thanks very much.”

Bannion stepped into the cold darkness, and checked the street right and left before starting down to the sidewalk. There was a man standing across the street, he saw then, a tall old man with a square, weather-roughened face. The man was under a street lamp and the light gleamed on his gold-braided shoulders, on the brass buttons of his blue overcoat.

Bannion paused, hands in his pockets and then strolled slowly across the street.

“Hello, Inspector,” he said.

Inspector Cranston nodded, smiling. “Hello, Dave.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Just smoking a cigar. Habit of mine after dinner.”

“Oh, sure. And always outside under a street lamp.”

“I smoke it anywhere I please,” Inspector Cranston said. “Tonight I’m smoking it here.” He glanced at his cigar. “Might take some time to finish this one, too.”

“You heard the police detail was pulled off here, eh?”

“Yes, that news got up to the Hall,” Inspector Cranston said.

“And that’s why you’re here.”

“I’m just smoking a cigar, I told you.”

“Under the street lamp, and in uniform,” Bannion said. He shook his head slowly. “You’re a little old for a beat job, Inspector.”

Cranston smiled slightly, a hunter’s smile. “This was too raw to overlook, Dave. They might can a cop for butting into it, but not an Inspector. Go on with your work. Nothing’s going to happen here tonight. That’s a promise from—” he paused, and said bitterly, “from the Bureau of Police, Dave.”

Bannion paused, oddly touched by this stem, honest, sad old cop. “I believe that,” he said, at last. “Enjoy your smoke, Inspector.”

“Goodnight, Dave, I will.”

Bannion walked down the street to his car. There was another one parked behind his, and he saw the figure of a man sitting behind the wheel. He slid his hand under his coat to the butt of his gun and stopped. The man in the car cranked down the window, put his head out and called, “Hello, Dave.” Bannion saw the light glint on his reversed collar.

Bannion let out his breath then and walked along to the car. “Out on a sick call, Father?” he said.

Father Masterson had no flair for irony. “No, it’s nothing like that,” he said, in a worried voice. “Al called me an hour ago and said the police had taken their men away from the house. He was upset about it—”

“What the devil did he call you for?” Bannion said.

“I don’t quite know,” Father Masterson said. “It’s preposterous to think I could help, of course.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Bannion said irritably. “But Al shouldn’t be alerting the whole city.”

“Why not?”

Bannion had no answer to that, so he said, “Father, Al’s got friends of his inside, and Inspector Cranston is standing out in the open across the street. An armored division couldn’t crash into that apartment tonight. Why don’t you go back to the rectory and have a cup of tea?”

“Well, that’s a comfortable idea, but I think I’ll stick it out,” Father Masterson said. “You know, Dave, it’s a curious thing but priests don’t often get shot. Some may regard that as a great pity, but it doesn’t happen very frequently. A man will shoot policemen, unarmed bystanders, women and children, but something stops him from firing on a man who wears his collar backwards. That’s superstition, of course, a Medieval hangover, you might say, but that’s how it works. So if there’s trouble I might come in handy. By the way, there’s a radical element who might claim that the symbol of God, even a poor symbol like me, has a discouraging effect on evil. But we’re way off the point, aren’t we?”

“Okay, Father,” Bannion said. “I’ve sounded extremely stupid, I realize. I’m sorry. Good hunting.”

“Why, thanks!” Father Masterson said with a pleased smile.

Bannion walked to his car and slid in behind the wheel, feeling something other than hate inside him for the first time since Kate had been murdered. Ahead of him the street looked quiet and innocent. Living room lights shone comfortably into the darkness. It was about as quiet and innocent as a ticking bomb, Bannion thought, as he stepped on the starter...

Debby was awake when he returned to the hotel. She was in bed and the lights were out, but she said, “Bannion?” in a quick scared voice when he opened the door.

“Yes, it’s Bannion,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“Oh, I’m great,” she said in a low voice.

“Mind a little light?”

“No, I guess not. I’ve got to get used to being looked at sometime.”

Bannion turned on the bed-side lamp. He saw that she had put on lipstick, and had made an attempt to comb her hair. “You’re looking better already,” he said. She lay with her arms outside the covers, pressed close to her slim body, and her face turned toward the wall. “Oh, I’m a knockout,” she said.

He got a glass of water from the bathroom and put her pills on the table. “It’s time for these,” he said. “Excuse me, I’m going to get a drink from my room.” He didn’t wish to embarrass her with his presence while she went about the clumsy business of sitting up and taking the pills. When he returned she was lying flat, her face averted; but the water and pills were gone.

Bannion sat down. “How about food? You must be hungry.”

“I’m okay.”

“You’ve got to eat. How about some chicken soup?”

“All right,” she said. “I’m a damn nuisance, I know. Why don’t you bounce me out of here?”

“Do you want to go?”

“—No.”

“Okay, stop talking that way then,” Bannion said. “I’ll order something for you on my way out.” He sipped his drink, frowning slightly, and then picked up her room phone.

“Are you going right out?”

“Yes, I must.”

She smiled weakly. “Can’t you just talk to me for a little while first?”

Bannion hesitated and then put the receiver back in place. “This isn’t much fun for you, is it?”

“Not much,” she said. “I feel like something that’s been shut up because no one wants to look at it. I just lie here and think, that’s all.” She smiled, but it was a lop-sided effort. “For a gal who spent most of her life not thinking, it’s a pretty rough routine.”

“It won’t last forever.”

“What was your wife like, Bannion,” she said slowly. “I know she’s dead. I remember reading about it. That’s why you pushed me out that first night. Maybe that was the reason, anyway.”

Bannion stared at her, his face perfectly still. “She was a tall girl, twenty-seven years old, with red hair and light blue eyes. She wore a size twelve dress, I think.” He stopped and looked at the drink in his hand.

“That’s a police description,” Debby said, with a little laugh. “That doesn’t tell me anything. Did she like to cook, did she like to be surprised, what kind of things struck her as funny — that’s what I mean.”

Bannion stood and walked slowly to the window. He stared down at the neon jungle of Arch Street, saw the rain shining on the car tracks, and two sailors running along the sidewalk, the collars of their peajackets turned up about their necks.

“I’m sorry, Bannion,” she said in a low voice. “I’m a dummy. You don’t want to talk about her. Not with me, I mean.”

“I don’t want to talk about her with anyone,” Bannion said, coming back to his chair.

“I’m sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” he said. He picked up the phone and gave the operator a number. He tried to push the tangled memories of Kate from his mind, for now, for just a little longer. This call might be the pay-off, the beginning of the pay-off.

“You going out?” Debby said.

“Yes, I’m sorry.” The phone buzzed at the other end.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” she said, using his phrase deliberately. Her voice wasn’t bitter, although she meant it to be; it was only unhappy.

The connection was made. A sharp, alert voice said, “Hello?”

Bannion motioned Debby to be silent. “Lieutenant Wilks?” he said.

“That’s right. Who’s this?”

“This is Dave Bannion, Lieutenant.”

Wilks said hello again, quickly and heartily. They exchanged how-are-yous? and fine-thanks, and then there came a pause, a waiting humming silence. Bannion grinned without humor, and said, “The reason I called, Lieutenant, is that I’d like to see you tonight if that’s possible.”

Debby glanced curiously at Bannion. His voice was faintly tinged with entreaty.

“Well, let’s see,” Wilks said. “Actually, Dave, tomorrow would be better. How about dropping in at the office?”

“I’d rather make it tonight,” Bannion said. “This is important, to me at least. I talked with Parnell, the county detective, this evening about the Lucy Carroway murder.”

He waited, still smiling tightly, as the silence came again, the straining anxious silence.

“What’s your interest in that murder, Dave?” Wilks said, at last.

“That’s what I’d like to see you about.”

“All right, come on out. I’ll be expecting you,” Wilks said. There was no pause this time; his voice was sharp and cold.

“In half an hour,” Bannion said. He put the phone in its cradle and got to his feet.

“Gosh, butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth,” Debby said.

“It wasn’t altogether an act. If I sounded worried, it’s because I am,” Bannion said. “Well, I’ll have something sent up for you. I’ll leave the key with you. Be sure to lock yourself in.”

“You sound excited. Have you got a lead?”

Bannion glanced at her, understanding, and touched by her interest. She wanted to mean something to someone, to be a part, if only a verbal part, of some other human being’s plans, hopes and needs. He felt for her a little of the pity that his hatred had denied to himself.

“Well, it’s a try for a lead,” he said. “Wish me luck, Debby.”

“I do, I do,” she said, in a low voice. “I hope you get them, Bannion. I hope you get them all.”

“Thanks, Debby.” He patted her hand and left the room.